Cities are pushing cropland toward the tropics and drylands

A global reconstruction links urban expansion to the relocation of farmland and pressure on less-modified landscapes.

Wild Lands Ecological Intelligence Editor
Wild Lands Institute · 29 October 2026

Cities are pushing cropland toward the tropics and drylands — Clint Wirick/USFWS — illustrative U.S. grazed/ungrazed prairie; NOT a mapped location in the global arable-land study · Public domain — U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service · Rights: Public domain

Evidence: Peer-reviewed
Geography: Global agricultural and settlement landscapes
System: Cropland redistribution; urbanization; tropical and dryland frontiers

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Researchers reconstructed global arable-land and settlement distributions across climatic zones. Expansion of settlements, especially in better-watered temperate regions, coincided with cropland being displaced toward marginal drylands, while tropical settlement and cropland expansion also transformed natural cover. The pattern creates indirect ecological costs beyond the mapped urban footprint.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

A land-use decision in one place can shift conversion pressure somewhere else. Ecological assessments of urban growth and agricultural policy should test displacement, forest conversion, water demand and food-system feedbacks rather than treating lost farmland as a local-only accounting change.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Global spatial reconstruction supports a plausible displacement mechanism but cannot identify an experimental cause for every parcel converted. Land-cover classes, climate zones and indirect trade responses carry uncertainty.

SOURCE

Nature Communications — Gao and colleagues (29 Oct 2026)
View original evidence ↗